During the month of October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Gazette offers continuing coverage in the HealthLife section dealing with aspects of the disease and recovery. This article was originally published on October 16, 2007.

WASHINGTON - You've finished the surgery, the radiation, the chemotherapy. You're a winner, a cancer survivor. Now what?

Survivor plan guide

First is a detailed treatment summary: The cancer's type and stage; tests of lymph nodes, genes and other indicators of prognosis; how much chemotherapy patients actually received, as side effects often mean skipped or lowered doses.

The second part is a consumer-friendly list of future exams and what symptoms to watch for.

A new push is on to provide patients with "survivor plans," long-awaited blueprints for the customized follow-up care they'll require for years.

Few today get that careful send-off as they leave cancer specialists and head back to their regular doctors, even though the Institute of Medicine alerted the nation two years ago that these survivors' special needs weren't being met.

Now a major doctors' group is creating easy-to-fill-out checklists that survivors can hand to future physicians - what checkups to get and when, what late side effects their treatment may trigger, what new symptoms to watch for.

The American Society for Clinical Oncology recently posted the first such documents - for colorectal and breast cancer - on its Web site, free to copy and customize. ASCO is developing guides for other leading malignancies - lung cancer is next - and a more general plan for less common cancers.

"We're at the cusp of a very dramatic change in the way we're going to be delivering coordinated care for cancer survivors," said Dr. Patricia Ganz of the University of California, Los Angeles, a cancer survivorship specialist who spearheaded the ASCO guides.

Today, "the patient feels lost," she said. "If everybody has the same marching orders, it will be a lot easier."

There are roughly 10 million cancer survivors, a population rapidly growing thanks to advances in early detection and treatment.

When active treatment ends, those people too often don't realize their simmering health risks. It's not just the possibility of the initial cancer returning or a new one forming.

Treatment may have left infertility, memory or mobility damage, impaired organ function. Some side effects may not appear for years. Then there are psychosocial consequences, from depression to problems keeping health insurance.

Consider the contrasts: Have a baby and you're sent home with care instructions, including when mom and child are to check in with their respective doctors. Have heart surgery, and likewise you receive nutrition and exercise rules, a list of worrisome symptoms and a checkup date.

Cancer treatment typically is far lengthier and complicated. Yet oncologists until now have had no standard way to offer a similar guide. Doctors like Ganz have pioneered survivor plans at specially designated cancer centers, but few people are treated at such hospitals.